Galactic Civilzations II: 21 Feb

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-13 01:44am

Man, I must be doing something really really wrong if I'm having trouble on normal difficulty.

I do pretty much everything you do, and settle with about 20 planets by the end of my expansion. Or maybe I should've stopped earlier? But otherwise the AIs all have 30+ planets each and the situation gets a bit ridiculous.

But I'll keep in mind the bit about using the starports of your newer colonies to build more colony ships. That might get me to spamming defenders earlier. That could be what I need to get the AIs off my back early on.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-13 02:51am

Terrans surrendered to me after they lost all but Earth, Mars, and 1 Class 13 world. I became a minor but respectable power overnight.

I have a battleship now, probably the first of its size. The Alan Bradley-class Battleship has two Mk V Warp Drives (11 parsecs/week baby!), 5 Deflector IIs (15 Shield means that Beams don't get in. Ever.). It also has 2 Nano Rippers, for 16 Mass Driver attack.

Yay for Starbases, I can get my Battleship's stats up to 20/20 with them.

Only problem is the AB-class costs 6 trillion to buy out of pocket and takes like 10 weeks to make one without it. Even on my factory world, it takes 6. However, I have 6 worlds devoted to making them at their own pace so I don't think I'll want for them.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-14 12:18am

Hey AB, with the latest patch it doesn't crash for me anymore. Although, it only used to after hours and hours of constant play, so maybe I just don't play like that anymore...

Anarchist Bunny · Post by **Anarchist Bunny** » 2006-03-14 12:45am

I think thats when it happens to me. Time kind of flows differently when I'm playing this game. Before I know it its three in the morning and I really need to go to the bathroom.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-14 03:31pm

Stardock has posted a preview for what they think would be cool and are making for Version 1.1 (plus more, they add).

Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords v1.1 is in development. We've got a lot of new features planned. The list below is by no means comprehensive. It's just some of the things we're focusing on:

+The ability to set a given planet as a technology, research, ship building or balanced planet, . NOT like the overall focus. It would literally add a 9% boost to a given type (or 3%, 3%, 3%).
+Color coded the hammers/etc. based on whether they are bonus or not. +Then on mouse over, which by then should be very nice, we can display where these numbers come from.
+On game setup, have an option to simply set up how many players you want to play against and have it randomly pick who you’re playing with.
+On game setup, have a checkbox that says "Randomize intelligence". The result would be that the game difficulty would be used to distribute the intelligence points. Example: I could select "Tough" and then have this checkbox selected and it would look at the # of players and the total number of intelligent points it takes to have tough and then distribute it out so that some are smarter than others (up to a 30% difference between intelligences).
+Lots of tweaks to the context window UIs which we’ll be discussing how best to do it.
+Fleet Manager screen.
+An option to show auto pilot ships destinations on map with a very very faint line (dotted preferably if possible) where they are going. Ala the trade routes.
+When selecting a constructor, have a very very faint circle that shows the area of effect a starbase would have.
+MAJORLY updated AI (not to make it tougher, to make it smarter at higher levels and dumber -- i.e. poor strategies -- at lower levels)
+Additional ship extras for more ship options
+Bug fixes of various kinds
+Approval Rating > 75% gives you a 5% boost to production. Approval rating < 40% has a -5% affect on production. Players won't be charged for this bonus production.
+Ability to rotate ship components in the Ship Designer
+Dynamic logo components - brand your ships with your insignia
+Enhanced context menus for managing stacked ships and fleets
+Starbase modules pruned/tweaked
+Unused Social Spending routed to military spending (or back to treasury if nothing is being used)
+New ship components
+UI for selecting MODS/Total Conversions
+Updated Scoring System
+No Tech Trading option
+New maps and scenarios
+Various tweaks to economics, costs, etc.

We expect to have this out by the end of the month. It'll be free for all customers of Galactic Civilizations II -- now at a store near you.

I was going to go through and bold the best parts, but I ended up with 60% of the list bolded so you'll just have to read it all since it's all good improvements- UI and AI stuff especially.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-03-14 03:33pm

+Fleet Manager screen.

That would be awesome. I'm sick of having perfectly good ships go missing in a war.

+Enhanced context menus for managing stacked ships and fleets

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-14 05:13pm

Wow. They've included suggestings (even *my* suggestions) from threads they never posted in. All I can say is 'w00t badges on ships'.

The 'no tech trade' thing is a bit of a bugbear for many people, so they'll make a lot of people happy by including it. AND FREEFORM ROTATING!

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-14 05:22pm

IMO

=Best Parts Gamewise:

AI Updates and Randomization.

Mirror Universe Scenario.

Social Production Fix.

Rotating Ship Parts.

Approval Rating matters (Yay for 94% approval Foundation!)

=Best Parts Conveniencesize:

UI Updates

Autopilot Path Shown

Constructors show radius of Starbase

Fleet Management (hopefully you can rename ships inside fleets now? I hate having to have ships leave planets or defleet just to name them something other than Class Name 114287)

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-14 05:36pm

I actually don't care for the 'mirror universe', particularly since I appear to have it already. Changing the political attitudes = lame and boring. People get excited about it - is there more to it? Do the images get goatees?

Adding shipbadges, the rotation, the UI changes, and the new setup options are good.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-14 05:39pm

Doing much better in my latest game. I started out with lots of diplomacy bonuses which kept my neighbors off my back for quite a long time. I even had the pleasure of consuming some Arcean systems culturally.

He eventually declared war on me, but I wiped the floor with my numerically inferior but technologically superior battleships and settled for peace.

But I've run into a problem. My Altarian ally is consuming my territory culturally. Is there a way to combat this aside from breaking my alliance and turning on him?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-14 05:42pm

Influence starbases + cultural modules. There doesn't need to be a planet in area of effect, so you can place it anywhere in space you'd like to push the border back a bit. It compares the sources of culture when determining the border, so a starbase won't have any problem with small or primitive worlds.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-14 05:53pm

Really? Interesting.

Time to pump out those constructors again.

(And thank goodness they don't have a maintenance price tag).

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-14 05:59pm

The more starbses you have the more dollars it costs to establish one, and many modules cost money. So don't go too nuts until your economy is ticking over nicely.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-14 06:01pm

Thankfully all the ones I used against the Arceans were destroyed during that little war. (is this a good thing or a bad thing? lol)

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-14 06:11pm

As far as Numerically Superior, I see it that way always. Is it just me, or does the AI have too many Corvette-sized ships and doesn't go to Medium/Large/Huge Hulls until you do?

Mirror Universe is cool because it's different. I wonder what the Good Mercenary Korx will be like. Or the Thalans, if they'll be any different at all.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-14 06:20pm

Hey MRDOD will know. The cost for starbases: is it somehow related to logistics? It mentions logistics in the box. I figured the cost is based on the proportion of your 'starbase logistics' you have filled, but it goes up pretty fast.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-14 06:26pm

Stark wrote:Hey MRDOD will know. The cost for starbases: is it somehow related to logistics? It mentions logistics in the box. I figured the cost is based on the proportion of your 'starbase logistics' you have filled, but it goes up pretty fast.

As far as I can tell:

More Logistics = Cheaper Starbases
More Logistics = More Starbases Until They Become Expensive.

They seem like the prices and the intervals drop each time you gain logistics.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2006-03-14 06:31pm

yes, logistics effect the number of moduals you can have, and the number of starbases (since you start out with log of four any add on moduals will be considered an expense until you get to log 6-9) you can have no more SB then your logistics level.) and moduals cost if they are larger then logistics/3

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-14 07:04pm

Does anyone else have module upgrade screens claiming the maximum modules is 15, then after upgrade the starbase screen says 'maximum modules 63'? It seems broken.

Duckie · Post by **Duckie** » 2006-03-14 07:33pm

Stark wrote:Does anyone else have module upgrade screens claiming the maximum modules is 15, then after upgrade the starbase screen says 'maximum modules 63'? It seems broken.

One of them is Total Modules Buildable, the other is Modules That Can Fit In The Starbase. The higher one is obviously Modules Buildable.

That does need to be corrected, though, it's very unclear. I only know because I saw it on the forums.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-14 08:12pm

Ohh. I thought it was being retarded and saying I could only have 15, until I built 2 - then I could have 63. Wierdness. Hopefully this will all be cleared up in the next patch. It's strange: all the little wiernesses and niggles don't really detract from my enjoyment of the game. I'm taking the GTVA to another stirring victory over everyone everywhere!

EDIT - And their 'approvals' thing for mods in the library is slow as ass. I had to update my SC2 stars mod (since apparently the library truncates filenames at spaces, so everyone was downloading 'starcon2' instead of 'starcon2 stars.zip') and neither it nor the FS2 symbols are available.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-14 08:23pm

That galactic event where everyone's cultural influence suddenly skyrockets happened and I got swamped.......

One question: Does approval rate affect how likely a planet might defect under cultural pressure, or is it just for party elections?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-14 08:26pm

I think defections are solely based on the influence-index thing - if it gets to 4, the planet may defect.

Yeah, that 'your influence generation sucks' event is a killer - and I had it, patched, and then the event never ended... :S

Anarchist Bunny · Post by **Anarchist Bunny** » 2006-03-15 04:48pm

The Galactic Core is the first GalCivII mod site I've seen as of yet. Doesn't have much but might be something to keep an eye on.

After a few rounds of beginner I moved up to a normal game. While I am able to produce fleets that can annialate opposing fleet(my fleet of Almeida-Classes tore through Terran fleet after Terran fleet), I am horrible out classed in research. Even considering I'm not investing much in the mass driver or missile tech trees, I am horribly out classed by even minor races in numbers of techs.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2006-03-15 06:39pm

I find that if you go on a massive fleet-building spree, the AIs all put massive resources into research. And then when they start building their fleets again, their superior ships make their military rating skyrocket over yours.

But the military rating is pretty deceiving. For example, I've had two instances where I had only a sixth of an enemy race's military rating, but my ships were so much technologically superior that they cut down the enemy's military rating by 2/3rds without losing a single ship and I took over several systems from the enemy.

But it does determine whether AIs begin to lean towards conquering you for your weak relative military strength or not, so it's more important early on where the tech difference between you and them is barely existent.

PS: When you do achieve a massive military rating, I think the best course of action then is to ally with all the people you can ally with, and take advantage of your initial military superiority and invade those races who you can guess will be a bigger threat later on.